


soft reset (oh how we hate our creators, our fate)

by knightship



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brainwashing, M/M, Memory Alteration, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-06 04:58:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 6,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1845157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knightship/pseuds/knightship
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is only one thing different in this universe, and it is that Bucky Barnes hangs on to a metal railing for fifteen extra seconds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. fifteen seconds

There is only one thing different in this universe, and it is that Bucky Barnes hangs on to a metal railing for fifteen extra seconds.

Instead of plummeting down and landing like the jumpers on Wall Street at the bottom of the cliff face for enemy soldiers to find, he plunges straight to the bottom of an icy cold stream. He is still awake, when he hits, but not for long. He gasps in when the brutality of the cold hits him, and gags and kicks and slowly, ever so agonizingly slowly, drowns.

Steve marches on the same as ever, now a martyr ticking down the time until his big end game. He knows, before he makes the plan, even, that he will die as soon as he finishes his mission. He feels horrible about Peggy. The automated flight pattern, that’s just a blessing in disguise. A good reason to not have said goodbye when he had the chance, since it’s a surprise and all.

They both stew in ice for another fifty years, and then two local villagers catch a World War II American rifle when they go ice fishing. They spread the word, and soon the whole village has pitched in to trawl the small lake that’s now formed from heavy snow melt. They almost miss the body, buried as it is in icy mud, but when they pull up an arm that should have decomposed ages ago, someone makes a phone call.

That phone call leads to a team seizing the operation the next day. Their jackets have eagles on them. There is a beautiful British woman leading the way.

Bucky Barnes is resurrected twenty years early and molded uncertainly into the twentieth century, and into the new Captain America.

In the Antarctic, there is the trashed wreckage of a giant plane. Its skeleton was picked clean of valuables forty years prior, and the most valuable thing by far was the man frozen in the cockpit.


	2. open him up

Steve wakes up alone, aching, cold, and disoriented. It takes only a few minutes for that last to fade, though. He determines that his feelings, of bewilderment and loss and guilt, can wait until he’s assessed his surroundings and escaped to somewhere safe. Then he realizes he is in a brightly lit concrete room with no other features, naked and locked to a table with surgical equipment all around him. He strains against his bonds, one foot and the opposite hand first so he has reach and mobility on both sides, but he’s only gotten them to start buckling before a man comes in, armored and armed, and points a rifle at Steve’s head.

He glares, and goes still.

“Where are we?” he asks.

The guard, unreadable under his face shield, is silent. 

“Who are you? Who do you work for?” he asks, because there are no logos on his armor, no hints. He’s thinking HYDRA, because they’re the obvious choice. Just because he took out Schmidt doesn’t mean there weren’t splinter cells or contingency plans. 

The man only stands there. No reaction. No signs of being uncomfortable with Steve’s heavy stare or his nudity at all.

Something is very, very wrong here, he thinks, and subtly tries to break his thumb to get his wrist out of its cuff.

And then Zola walks in.

“Ah, Captain!” he crows cheerily, as Steve’s stomach sinks to the back of his spine and horror makes his skin prickle like the cold hasn’t. This man twisted Bucky into something not quite the same, he knows. He tortured his best friend. And now Steve is here, the perfect soldier, and he is at this man’s mercy.

“Are you experiencing any pain? Deadened nerves? Trouble thinking?”

When all Steve does is glare and flip Zola a rude hand gesture, the man chuckles.

“So full of vigor, even after your little dip. That’s very good, Captain,” he says, patting Steve’s chest idly as he turns to the array of tools, “That’s very good. But it does not matter if you obey me now. We can fix that.”

He holds up something wicked looking, gleaming in the light, and Steve’s heart is jumping up in his throat with ill-concealed panic.

“Whatver you want to get out of me, I’ll never talk,” he says, and means it down to his bones.

Zola chuckles darkly.

“Oh, Captain. Any information you had is now meaningless. Congratulations. Your side won the war. But you, you have lost. Your rank, your title, your name, and your life. They all belong to me now,” he says, and then guides Steve’s head to the side, despite how he fights, and the whine of a bone saw is nothing new to Steve.

The bright white hot pain at the back of his head, that, that’s new.


	3. oops

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the spotty updates, I'm on vacation and the WiFi is spotty. More coming soon!

Whatever they do to him, he wakes up after, huddled on a bed. He is not bound because he is not strong enough to stand. He can only scratch the back of his head bloody, whimpering pre-vocal noises into his pillow because they made him forget how to speak. They made him forget too much, that time.


	4. round two

The next time is better. Zola lets him heal up, and then he cuts again. When he wakes from the cutting, he still remembers how to talk, how to stand. The left half of his face is numb, though. Zola tuts, pulling at his cheek. He rears back from the touch and attempts to snarl. They’ve bound him again or he’d be fighting back.

“It’s only been a few hours, and already he is not complacent,” Zola remarks, looking miffed. There’s more people now, more faceless guards and nervous medical staff.

“Fuck you, fuck all of you, I’ll never be complacent,” he says, nearly screams, straining shaking muscles against his metal cuffs. He’s rubbed raw all over from being cold and naked, weak, can’t remember when he last ate or drank, but that doesn’t stop him from leaning his weight into his sore wrists and yelling around the pain as they break, even as guns are shoved up against him and there are shouts.

The shouts are in Russian.

No one fires.

So he’s most likely in Russia, close to the Antartic, and he’s valuable enough a test subject that they won’t shoot him even when he defies orders.

“Bring me the- ah, yes, thank you,” Zola says, and Steve registers a sharp prick in his shoulder, the whine of electricity, and before he can force himself to react, he is seizing so hard he feels his joints crack and his vision fuzzes white, but he smiles because he knows where he is.


	5. you only get to keep one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> should be back to a semi-regular schedule now!

Zola takes…a long time, to perfect his process, and then meld it into a machine. Steve doesn’t quite….know. How long it takes. But it takes a long time, long enough that they have to hose him down three times and force a tube down his throat that distends his stomach and makes him feel less gnawing and empty often enough that he stops fighting when they come in with the tube.

It’s harder to retrieve things. In his head, once the machine is built. They wipe him every handful of days. At least he thinks they’re days.

There’s something important he’s supposed to remember, he knows. A name. Not his own. The name of- of a place? 

Sometimes he fights because he has to, he has to get out, he has to find-

And that’s where he gets stuck. He can’t remember anymore. He can’t remember, so he stops fighting.

“What is your name?” a man asks. Steve has been given clothes, moved into a different room. This man is not Zola, but something about his face is familiar. It makes his chest hurt.  
“Steven Grant Rogers,” he replies, and he gets the shocker. It’s not as intense, but it still leaves him breathless on the floor.

“What is your name?” the man asks again. His voice is heavily accented. Steve needs to know what that accent is.

“Steve,” he says, voice trembling, and he gets hit with the shocker again, this time a harsh punch to the kidneys that leaves him hacking wet bile into the concrete.

“What is your name?” the man asks again. It’s some sort of European, he knows. It sounds foreign because he’s not from Europe. He’s from America. America! That’s it. He’s Captain America. How on earth did they make him forget _that?_

"Holy shit,” he breathes, watching his fingers spasm, and the man leans down. 

“What was that?" 

He latches his hand hard around the man’s windpipe, and squeezes. 

It’s only when he’s straddling his convulsing body that he realizes the man looks like Bucky. 

The name takes a moment to place, along with the pale skin, blue eyes, bow mouth, but this man does not have the same jaw or tangle of dark hair that Bucky had. Either way, he lets go, breathing hard, and finds solace in the corner of the room until the guards come to take him to the machine again. 

This time, he is scared. He doesn’t want to forget. He digs his heels in, pleads, whines and squirms, but neither guard relents, so he gives that up. Instead, he tries to commit the words to memory so deep they’d have to cut him open again to find it. Russia. Captain America. Bucky. But it’s going to be hard, and it’s going to hurt, and he doesn’t know how well remembering all of that will go. So he narrows it to one word, the most important thing to who he is. 

Steve repeats the word silently to himself, even as they fit the mouth guard between his teeth. 


	6. and the winner is

“Who are you?”

The man is familiar, and he squints at him, slightly confused.

“Bucky?” he says, then reaches for the man.

He is shocked.

“Bucky, please,” he squeals, even as the shocker comes down again, “Please, Buck, we can get out. If we work together, we can- please, Bucky!”

He breaks his teeth, again, from how hard he clenches them. He’s fairly sure he pissed himself again, too. They’re turning the electricity higher, he supposes, and when the man asks him again, he only curls in a ball and waits for the shocks.


	7. use me up, babe

Eventually, the man can ask him anything, and he can only say, “I don’t know.”

The man leaves him alone in the room for a moment. He is surprised. There are no shocks this time. When he comes back, he has the little man with the glasses that runs the machine that wipes him.

“Who are you?” the man asks. He shrugs, says, “I don’t know.”

“This doesn’t bother you?”

That one’s harder to answer, and he takes his time to think, since they seem to want to really hear his answers now.

“I’m alive, and I’m not in danger of dying. I want…” he pauses, looks at the man-with-the-shocker’s face for a long moment, “I want to be useful.”

The little man smiles. His smile is awful, but his hand is gentle on his arm when he takes it and leads him out into the hall. For a moment, he almost recoils- he doesn’t like open spaces. He think he might have once, but now he just- he can’t.

“Good, good. I want you to meet someone, and he’ll show you how to be of use.”

“How long have I been here?” he asks, since apparently he can.

“About a year, now, my boy. Does that matter to you?”

“No. Just. Strange. Thought it’d been less time.”

“The machine will do that. Luckily, we are coming up with a way so that once you are an active asset, you can move from mission to mission without time elapsing for you. You will always be fresh and ready to go.”

He makes no comment, because he is busy trying not to show that he is excited. He has never gotten what he wanted just by asking before. Now he gets to go on missions. Missions. The word sends a thrill of warmth through him, of purpose, and he’d run to this man if only he knew the way.

They stop in a room that is oddly opulent. Carpet, desk, bookshelves, soft light. It feels wrong. He tenses, and the man at the desk stands, smoking a cigarette, and whistles. He’s wearing a suit, is older but fit, and speaks in Russian.

“You didn’t tell me you’d been starving him, Zola.”

“It was easier, for now. Makes him more complacent. This is General Vasily Karpov. He will be your new handler.”

He eyes Karpov uneasily as he approaches around the desk, and when he sticks out his hand, only stares at it.

“Not the most social thing, is he? That’s alright,” he says, and laughs. He gestures to the man-with-the-shocker, and he comes closer obediently.

Karpov holds out his hand, and the man hands him a pistol.

Karpov turns to him, and holds out the gun. More guards are there suddenly, pushing the man-with-the-shocker to his knees and holding him there even though he struggles and yells.

“There’s only one more step, son. Shoot this man in the head.”

He takes the gun, weighs it in his hand. He looks at the man-with-the-shocker. Something in him rebels, but its weak compared to his drive. He checks that the gun is loaded, levels it at the man’s head.

His eyes go wide. His blue eyes are all wrong.

“No, please, please, I can- I can be Bucky, if you want, I can help you-“

Pulling the trigger is easy. The sound of the body hitting the floor seals his future.

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lemme explain a bit of this, since I'm a psych major and I am fascinated by the human brain and how it has come to be this organic hard drive thing that we still don't really understand. I'm wagering, or at least using authorial hand-waving, that the machine doesn't exactly ruin the ability for long term memory, since then he wouldn't be able to remember stuff for more than a few seconds, maybe a minute at most. So what it really does is make the process of retrieving long-term memory harder, and also painful. Due to Steve's heightened everything, I'm thinking his pain tolerance is off the charts, too, so although its painful to remember things like mission parameters, he's capable because it's a habituated sort of pain. Where it gets really interesting is the limbic system. A lot of retrieving memory can be triggered by emotion, and so by asking Steve these things, then creating an association between the process of emotional remembering and pain, and then wiping him afterwards, they've essentially erased his what this process brings up but still kept the association and the instinctive repression that brings on.


	8. two of a suit

After that, his real training begins.

Karpov’s men teach him everything and anything. How to pilot a helicopter, how to pickpocket, how to wield handheld weapons he’s never heard of, languages and customs and how to work a computer. Some things, he already knows. How to clean a sniper rifle but not shoot one. French and Gaelic. How to dissect and analyze a room in less than seconds. Most martial arts and knives and how to drive a motorcycle.

They seem to want to test him all the time. They pit him against all kinds. He is always allowed to kill his opponents, and he does so whenever he feels like it. It was easy at first, and it gets easier and easier with each snapped neck and bullet to the forehead and crushed windpipe and knife to the lungs.

They give him a new test when they throw a seven year old girl in his room and lock the door.

“What am I supposed to do with you?” he asks, voice hoarse. He doesn’t talk much anymore, there’s not really a need. He listens and that’s all that’s required. The girl looks up. She wears a dirty, too-big shirt and mismatched shorts, her fiery hair tangled in her face.

“Teach me,” she replies in Russian, and he nods. 

Every training session, every kill, she is there. He tells her things, tips to make it easier, to compensate for her small size and lack of strength. He spars with her until she proves she has taken his words to heart or breaks a bone. She becomes agile and independent, a burning force. She is different from him in every way. She does not get the feeding tube, like he does. She is taken away from him every day to wash and eat. She has a name.

“It’s Natalia Alianovna Romanova,” she murmurs one night, when she is curled under his arm in the cot they share. 

“Pretty,” he says, pets her hair back from her face. She doesn’t say a word, only clings to his shirt with a sudden burning anger in her expression.

“I hate the way they make you so docile. You’re so strong. You could kill all of them.”

“And then what?” he asks. She is quiet again, and fights strangers in her sleep.


	9. batter up, lets play some ball

Natalia gets extra lessons in things he doesn’t need. She says they teach her how to act and lie and manipulate people, and sometimes when the day is done she’ll show him what she’s learned. But that’s not all that happens when she’s gone. There are track marks on the insides of her elbows, and she gets terrible headaches that have her muffling sobs into his chest at night. And Natalia never cries, even when he broke her wrist.

And then they get a mission.

He is ecstatic to have a purpose up until the point that they escort him to the plane. And then it’s just, there’s too many open spots, someone could be hiding anywhere, there are a million vantages points for a shooter, he needs a sniper on his side to watch his back so he can watch over others-

“Calm yourself,” Natalia says, holding his hand. They are both cleaner than they’ve been in…forever. They have new clothes. They are disguised as French civilians. He is Emile, twenty-seven and a painter. She is Laure, eight and his daughter. His mission is to seduce and then kill a supposedly loyal KGB officer. He is not supposed to try very hard- simply offer bait and wait for the man to accept. If he would go with a French man, then he will die. If he will not, then he will live.

They arrive in Paris and the entire time they are supposed to be setting up their flat, he is shaking with nerves. There are so many people, and every one of them could be an enemy, and he has Natalia to protect.

“Papa,” she chirps, a stuffed rabbit swinging from her hand, “we should go to the park before it gets dark.”

She is wearing an in-ear radio and receiving near-constant updates on their target’s position. This is, in every way, a test for both of them. He has identified Department X agents watching them from the opposite rooftop, and there are microphones and cameras everywhere in the flat. This is how he knows that he has no choice but to follow orders. He has no choice but to remember that he is the most dangerous man in this city, and that if there is an attack, he will be ready, and he has trained Natalia to be ready.

They go to the park. It is open and beautiful. The sun feels fantastic, and the smell in the air infuses him with warmth. There are children and people and for a moment, he is able to relax, to feel like he belongs.

And then he looks down, and Natalia is gone.

“Laure?” he calls, spinning to see her, but she is nowhere, “Laure? Laure!”

He starts walking, hoping that she has not decided to desert the mission and the Department, listening for a gunshot, a scream, anything. He spots a flash of red and rushes toward it, calling out, “Laure!”

She turns, smiles at him. She is talking to the target, who is holding the leash of a dog that seems to be as susceptible to her charms as the target. 

He channels his very real worry into the situation as he crouches without looking at the man once, seizing her by the shoulders. 

“Laure, what have I told you? You have to stay where I can see you! What if you’d been taken and I couldn’t find you? Then what am I supposed to do?”

Her eyes water on cue, and he schools his expression into guilt and exasperation as he brushes at her eyes. She apologizes softly, and then he pretends to only just notice the target.

“My apologies, my daughter, she is willful, and I am prone to worrying over her too much, perhaps,” he says, and the man laughs.

“No problem, my friend. Samson seems to like her, at least, and I for one am smitten,” he says, and ruffles her hair gently as the Dalmatian snuffles at her face. She smiles shyly, and he smiles at the man too. It is much easier to act this way than he thought, but it seems that he knows how to put on a show just as well as Natalia.

They spend until darkness with the target. They go home, and he has the target’s phone number, with a promise that he will call. Natalia smirks at him over noodles, which he does not dare eat.

“See, Papa? I knew the man would like me. And now he likes you too.”

He comes around the counter and sits on the stool next to her, leaning close.

“You must never do that again,” he says, and her eyes lock up, go calculating.

“I’m capable of-“

“I am aware of what you are capable of,” he says, “but you are not aware of what they are capable of.”

“Who?” she asks, all bravado or all fake innocence, he can’t tell which.

“People,” he says, and she frowns, small and sad, into her bowl. She rubs the inside of her elbow, then looks up at him again. There is righteous anger in her eyes, and it sparks something like longing in his hollow chest.

“Please,” he asks, cupping her cheek, “for me.”

She frowns, but nods, rubs into his palm like a cat for only an instant before pulling away to slurp her noodles up.

The next day, the target shows up at their door with flowers, for Laure, and after dinner that he does not eat and wine he does not drink, the man kisses him. 

He smashes the man’s skull against the wall. They pose him as instructed, leave their message, and go. Natalia steps daintily over his body on the way to the door.


	10. little widow

She loves her place, her cause. She knows girls are not like her- she remembers, from before. That girls were dainty little things, and she knows how to act like she is like this when they go out on missions. She likes the power to be anything and everything all at once.

She does not love the things they do to him. 

Now, she is fifteen, and she’s watching him lay on the floor of their room, breathing ever so slightly unevenly into the concrete. He was wiped thirty minutes ago, and has not looked at her or spoken since. He has barely done more than breathe.

Eventually, he pushes himself up on his elbows, swaying. He is shirtless, and she can see how hollowed-out he looks, like his muscles have been strung onto a dried up corpse. She, at least, eats well once a day. He’s lucky if they remember to bring that blasted tube in every third day. His skin is also a rashy red from being hosed down, and he scratches absently at healing skin before he looks at her, eyes vacant.

“Nnn,” he tries, and she sighs with relief as she climbs off the bed, kneels in front of him and takes his head in her hands. He cannot always remember which name belongs to her face, since she’s cycled through so many in his presence, but it’s obvious from his frustration that he knows who she is today.

“Natalia,” she says, “it’s Natalia. Say it.”

“Na…Nataaal-ia,” he says, clumsy, like a baby.

“Good,” she says, soft and gentle, the exact opposite of everything they say she must be. She scratches his scalp for him and his eyes start to water, and he cries, silent, never once blinking.

“They’re going to make you like me, aren’t they,” he says eventually, voice thick and still clumsy, but better. She stops scratching. His skin is turning golden again. His healing rate is incredible.

“Not exactly,” she says, but that means close enough.

His hand lurches up. With each centimeter reached she can see his control refining. Soon he will be back to normal, stewing in his thoughts and cautious about every move he makes, lest the powers behind the cameras grow unhappy.

“You have to get out of here,” he says, suddenly hissing, vehement, as he grips the back of her neck in a vice, “You have to escape. I’m going to help you get free, Natalia, and you run, and you never stop, you hear me?”

He’s switched to English, something he does sometimes when he’s upset, and suddenly the door flies open. He doesn’t wait, docile, for them to take him this time. He fights, and he could win, except that as soon as blue electricity touches his skin, he yelps, skitters away, suddenly cowering at the faceless guards, and once they get their hands on him, he gives up.

His eyes catch hers. He pleads with her, desperate. She looks at him, and nods, and he hangs his head with obvious relief. 

He is gone by the time the guards come for her. She is surprised- she flits away from them, asks over and over what they want. Until finally, Karpov is there. She stands at attention, and he frowns down at her.

“You will let them take you,” he says, and then squeezes her chin too hard in his hand, “and they will wipe your friend’s traitorous talk from your mind. Understand?”

She nods. She is more terrified of what they will do to him than what they will do to her but- she does not want to die. She does not want to forget. Karpov perhaps reads this on her, and smiles sickeningly.

“You love him, don’t you?”

Lying will get her further, but she wonders. He is a broken thing- effective, but broken. He could be replaced, should have been, by someone more loyal and moldable. There must be some secret to him that she doesn't know, that makes him worth keeping Finally she nods, and it earns her a slap across the face.

She wants, deliriously, to laugh in his face. As if a mere slap is any kind of punishment to the likes of her. The things she has been through under his tutelage would break a man like Karpov.

“Love is for children,” he says, “and you will forget him and your love for him. The only thing you can love is your cause, little Widow, and if you remember one thing after this, it should be that.”

The funny thing is, she does. Only Karpov never specified which part of her cause, and when she is no longer swimming in fear and pain and confusion, she pushes herself off the floor and knows that she is built to kill. And she will kill Vasily Karpov.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Natalia's POV! I could legit write a whole nother fic about this girlie and how whacked up the Red Room makes her brain and how she remains herself throughout it all (Boss Ass Bitch plays in the background) but, alas, this is Steve's rodeo. But I'm liking how different POVs change up the tone, so expect more chapters like this once we get the peanut gallery up in here. ;)


	11. even if i dont know you, you're my girl

They take him to the training room. Whatever test they have planned today, it makes the guards anxious. He is too busy feeling strange to process their nerves. He feels too full of something like air, or whatever fills in absence, to pay much attention to anything at all until they point him to the mat, and there is a woman across the mat from him, tense and ready.

Her red hair is gorgeous. He wonders at it for a minute, wonders what she would look like with primped curls and vicious red lipstick, then really looks at her face.  
She is frightened, and angry, and the frustration on her face hits him brutally in the gut, because it’s the same frustration that has worn smooth in him with every wipe, the frustration of trying to reclaim what you don’t know is missing.

“Winter Soldier. Black Widow. You will fight to the death,” a guard announces, and there are fifteen guards in this room, all equipped with shockers, lining the walls.  
For once, he is not afraid of these men. He feels nothing, but how utterly dangerous he is. No one is walking out of this room except those that he allows, and right now, that’s all of one person.

They launch at each other at the same time, and he wonders if she will really try to kill him, but their eyes meet. She knows him too. She does not know how, but she does, and she trusts that.

He crouches as she reaches him, and she springs off the flat of his bent thigh like a gymnast, twisting expertly through the air to reach the guards behind him as he goes for the ones across the room. This will have to be quick, since the men behind the cameras will send reinforcements as soon as they see. But he’s good at quick, and with one last savage punch that crushes the bones of a man’s forehead, he seizes two shockers and joins Black Widow at the door.

“Any idea how to get out?” he asks, and she takes one of the shockers from him, eyes hard.

“I’m not escaping. I’m going to kill Karpov. This needs to end,” she says, and a part of him wants to rebel against the idea, something saying it’s too dangerous for her, but he knows that’s not true. He nods, and she leads him to an office, then a lab, then a helipad. She curses, shocker held tight enough in her grip that she might break it.

“Dammit,” she says again, “he must not be here.”

“So let’s just go. We can,” he says, and gestures to the small helicopter on the helipad. She looks so helplessly angry, and he feels anxious out in the open, like they’re pressing their luck.

That was when every entrance flooded suddenly with men, all armored too heavily to use their shockers on, too many of them to take on in any kind of efficient way without room to maneuver, and too armed to get around.

He put his shocker down and his hands up. Black Widow did not do the same, though there was clearly no escape.

At least, not for the both of them.

“I will surrender peacefully if the Black Widow is allowed to go free,” he called, and the guards did not shift uneasily, quite, but there was general unease that spread among them.

“No, we can make it,” she hissed, behind him, jittery like a cornered cat, “or you should go. You’ve been here too long, Soldier.”

He knows this, and feels his own resignation like a weight around his neck.

“No. I promised,” he says, but he doesn’t know where the words come from.

She stills behind him, and her hand touches his back, gently.

“Alright,” she says, and he steps backwards with her, guarding her with his bigger frame as she goes to the helicopter. She climbs in, and he waits as it starts to whip the air.

Guards start to close in as it lifts off, but he’s not about to let them take him until he’s sure she’s safe, too far to shoot down. He fights until they’re piled on top of him, holding him down with sheer weight because their strength isn’t enough against him. Despite the gear, he’s killed nine men.

Feet come into his view, two pairs of men’s shoes. One is Karpov’s, though where he came from, the Soldier doesn’t know.

“Well,” the other man says, smooth American English, “he’ll need some work, but he’s exactly what I need. Seems we have a deal.”


	12. new deal

Pierce is a much different master than his last one.

For one thing, there is no more undercover missions. He remember that he used to have to play out a long con sometimes, and it was strange- he didn’t like it. Now, he is sometimes required to blend in with a crowd, but anything more complicated than that is taken care of by other agents, and he is left with what Pierce calls his art, his gift.  
That is the part he likes best. He is left to choose his own tactics, his own weapons, most of the time, and he likes that. 

Pierce likes to explain things to him about his targets too. This man is a bad father, this woman betrayed all her employees, this girls political views will rock the delicate peace of her entire family. It makes him think, sometimes, if he would still kill these people if they weren’t bad. He thinks, maybe, he would.

Pierce is also surprisingly gentle. He uses no shockers, no punishments. He is wiped after every mission, but every time, he wakes up in the same chair, and Pierce leans over the side of the armrest and smiles, and he tells the Soldier everything that has happened recently that is important. It’s the sort of courtesy that he appreciates so much, not just for the way it lets him come back to reality easier, but because he knows it means he can trust Pierce.

He gets three missions to get used to this routine, and then Pierce is nodding over him, expression pensive.

“I don’t think your services will be needed for a while,” he says, “so we’re going to let you rest.”

That sounds… good. He nods, and Pierce steps back to let him stand. He’s shown to something like a metal tank tilted back to recline in, and Pierce steers him into it with a gentle hand on his back.

“There you are,” Pierce says, and steps back again. His smile is proud, and he sighs happily to himself. 

“You’re doing such great things for the future,” he says, and if the Soldier were more sentimental, he’d be happy with how much Pierce seems to like him.

The door closes, and there’s a porthole for him to look out of. For a moment he feels utterly confused- this is familiar, in a way that makes his gut twist with anticipation and excitement.

And then it gets cold, fast, and he thinks he might let out a noise but there’s no way to be sure, there’s no way to be anything but frozen solid.


	13. that feeling you get when things start to go just a little wrong

When he wakes up, from that first deep freeze, its hell.

His mind defrosts first, which is the worst part. He can assess that he is totally, utterly helpless, and there’s nothing he can do. He can’t even open his eyes, or shiver, or wail to alleviate some of his anxiety. All he wants is to move, and he can’t.

Eventually he starts to feel the warmth seeping in, and it’s too much. It feels like he’s burning, like they’ve put him on the sun. The pain is so overwhelming, but he doesn’t black out. Instead, he tears his eyelids trying to open them, and someone curses and starts sewing them back together.

When he’s reached a point of almost peace with the pain, where he can talk himself into knowing that the pain is just his body healing damage and it’ll be done soon, he feels hands in his hair, and Pierce sighs above him.

Boiling rage fills him, and he has not felt anything like it ever in his life. He can feel himself trembling, and forces his mouth open to speak, but Pierce speaks over him.

“I know, I know you’re upset, but this is a necessary evil. You like taking down bad guys, right? You’d like to protect people for a good long time?”

He nods cautiously, and Pierce pets his short hair softly.

“Good. This process, the freezing- it keeps you young and healthy even though six years have passed. We could keep you frozen for much, much longer, and once you’ve come back to yourself you’ll be exactly as strong and perfect as you were when you were frozen. You can continue your work for forever.”

He trembles, and doesn’t say anything. For all that Pierce is good to him, he doesn’t like it when the Soldier talks, and the lump of dread in his stomach isn’t worth voicing, anyways.

He nods again, and Pierce pats his shoulder. The touch burns like acid against his sensitive skin.

“Good, that’s the attitude! Now, let’s get to work.”


	14. tangential

Targets sometimes have guards. Dogs are the worst. He doesn’t like killing dogs, it’s too much like finding his own face in a polished surface to see them snarl and whine.

There is one time, when there is a guard for a scientist. She is clever and tough and the sight of her red hair through his scope makes him sigh, a little, and murmur “Pretty,” to himself as he pulls the trigger.

She buckles as the bullet passes through her side, and his target falls. He does not bother killing her. She cannot pursue him.


	15. whats coming next may shock and horrify you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sORRY that chapter updates have gotten fucked up. Work and moving and school coming up has gotten me all in a tizzy. I'll try to have at least two updates a week on this from now on.

And then he’s woken from the agonizing cold, is thawed with so much care, and when he can move without pain, they put him in a room.

They shove a boy in the room. Scraping at the line between too skinny and wiry, skin tan, jaw square, eyes bluuuuue, hair dark and just starting to curl a bit. Scared out of his wits but grimly silent. Trying to be brave.

He stares at the boy, and there’s this horrible swooping guilt in his stomach, but he doesn’t know why. He hasn’t done anything, not yet, and even if had, he does not have room for remorse.

One of Pierce’s men is standing just behind his shoulder, and hisses questions in his ear.

“Who does he look like?”

He tenses. His body remembers the words he must say in order to avoid punishment, but his voice has not been used in so long that he has to say it many times over before he’s loud enough to hear.

“I don’t know.”

“He doesn’t remind you of anyone?”

“No.” He pauses. “Should he?”

This routine continues for days. There is never any punishment, and that almost makes it worse. If he knew what to expect, he wouldn’t feel so unstable, but every day its relentless questions, and finally he snaps, against orders, and marches across the room to punch the boy in the face.

He goes down limply, and does not move. Blood pools under his head, and true, sickening remorse pulses over him before Pierce’s man says, “Good. You’re ready.”


End file.
